Every quarter, the tech world's market research firms release metrics on how many PCs, phones and tablets Apple reported selling and compare these to estimates of what the rest of the world produced, resulting in headlines that minimize the importance of the world's largest and most profitable company. You might wonder why.

Macs and market share

Following a routine that began in the 1990s, Gartner and IDC spent the 2000s noting that Apple's Mac market share was virtually irrelevant, afloat in an ocean of PC sales without giving much regard to the fact that Apple enjoyed very high share in some market segments (such as education and graphic design) and essentially none in others (such as enterprise sales, kiosks and cash registers).

On a worldwide scale, Apple's sales of Macs did seem to be a drop in the proverbial bucket. Between 2001 and 2004, Apple's global annual Mac sales hovered around 3 to 3.5 million while the entire PC industry grew (according to Gartner) from 128 million to 189 million, an expansion of over 47.6 percent. Without Macs growing much at all, Apple's "share" slipped from 2.3 percent to less than 2 percent.

Things began to change in 2005, just months after John Dvorak penned his market share-centric prognostication of doom, "Grim Macintosh Market Share Forebodes Crisis," paragraphs of misguided negativity about Apple based almost entirely upon misleading market share statistics that appeared to drown the Mac in the expansive waters of P Sea.

Dvorak failed to see the potential for iPods and Apple's strategy for iTunes, complaining of these initiatives, "none of these has anything to do with the Macintosh," and (comically, in retrospect) observing, "much of the problem arises from the psychology created by the overpriced iPod. And Mac users who buy the players contribute to the problem by encouraging the company to maintain its high-margin death march."

Over the next year, Apple's "iPod halo" and expanding retail stores helped Mac sales to rapidly grow, doubling sales to hit 7 million Macs sold in fiscal 2007. While Mac sales grew by 100 percent, the overall PC market (including Macs) only grew by 43 percent from 2004 to 2007. Over the next four years, Mac sales more than doubled again to 16.7 million in 2011, while the overall PC industry grew by just 16 percent. The next year, the PC industry actually contracted. Then things got even worse.

However, there was something far more disruptive happening to PCs than the expansion of Apple's Mac sales.

Rise of the mini Macs

While Mac sales took off, Apple was also building a new kind of personal computer: a highly mobile one. In 2007, iPhone packed a Mac into a handheld device. By 2010 Apple was selling 47.5 million iPhones per year, more than ten times the volumes of desktop Macs it had been selling in 2005. While Mac sales took off, Apple was also building a new kind of personal computer: a highly mobile one

Something else happened in 2010: iPad, a highly mobile personal computer with a tablet form factor. Shortly after it went on sale, Gartner and IDC stopped counting tablets as Personal Computers. Well not exactly; they stopped counting tabletsthat didn't run Windows as Personal Computers.

This prevented Apple from distorting their PC market share figures. As the PC market mysteriously flattened out (it failed to grow by more than 2 million units between 2010 and 2012, a pace more than twice as slow as that seen during the recession of 2008), Apple's iPad sales quickly ramped up to 58.3 million per year.

For 2012, Mac and iPad sales represented almost 19 percent of the global PC market, making Apple the largest PC vendor. However, rather than recognizing the very obvious impact iPad sales were having on conventional PCs, IDC and Gartner shifted iPad sales into a separate bin of "media tablets."

This took Apple's iPad out of statistical competition with PC, the product it was actually competing with in the market, and instead pitted it in a market share war with an avalanche of Android tablets, which were not having any clear impact on iPad sales at all.

Shipments of new Android tablets affected iPad about as much as the waves of MP3 players splashing at the feet of blockbuster iPods sales several years prior; nobody who wanted an iPod really considered MP3 alternatives, and everyone who bought a generic MP3 player did so only to not buy an iPod. iPads and generic tablets are seeing identical buying patterns today, with virtually identical ratios of buyers picking Apple.

Rather than battling generic tablets as market researchers and pundits had hoped, iPad continued to muscle its way into not just Apple's existing market niches (such as education and graphic design) but also those long held by generic PCs (such as enterprise sales, kiosks and cash registers). Generic tablets haven't gained much traction anywhere.

Playing CalvinBall in Personal Computers

In fiscal 2013, Apple's huge volumes of iPad sales increased 22 percent over the previous year, despite the incessant warnings of Garter, IDC and now Strategy Analytics that Apple's "share of the tablet market" was actually falling.

Why was it newsworthy that Apple's "tablet share" was falling within a "market" of devices that are having little readily discernible impact on iPad growth and essentially no impact at all on iPad's education, enterprise or usage share, while the iPad's readily apparent, devastating impact on conventional PC sales in education and enterprise markets as well as in general use by consumers was rarely even hinted at by Gartner, IDC and Strategy Analytics?

It could have been that market research companies were so used to dismissing Apple as an irrelevant also-ran that they simply could not fathom numbers that told a different story. Or it's possible that their numbers told a different story because they could not fathom not dismissing Apple as an also-ran. Tasked with deciding whether to award first place to winner they gained nothing from awarding, it simply made more sense to change the rules of the game in order to continue playing.

Stacking the deck against iPad

Over the past year, the failure of Android tablets from Amazon, Samsung, Asus, LG, Microsoft and Google/Motorola to live up their sales predictions (or have any substantial impact on the iPad at all) has demanded a new tactic in the anti-counting of Apple's iPad.

This summer, Strategy Analytics borrowed a page from the 1990s playbook of Gartner and IDC in inventing a "white box" market for unbranded tablet devices. This allowed the firm to count over ten million "tablets" that exist elsewhere, devices whose sole purpose almost appears to be statistical.

The firms counting these devices need not connect them to a particular manufacturer's sales nor profits, nor explain why the devices have left no discernible footprint anywhere on earth: no impact on web traffic, no retail store traffic, and no boosting of tablet apps or media sales.

This quarter, IDC similarly began counting tons of new "white box tablets," discovering so many that it had to update its year-ago figures just to include them all. This seemed so suspicious that IDC's Ryan Reith offered to clarify why this retrofiguring was done.

The search for Red Octablet

Reith explained in a phone conversation with AppleInsider that IDC had embarked upon a months-long study of ODM (manufacturer) research, which turned up a "significant surge in low end devices."

It turned out that by reducing the definition of "tablet" to include anything that involved a 7 to 16 inch screen, a "known CPU" and a "recognizable operating system" (which might include Linux, but just not any embedded, proprietary software apart from Windows, Android or iOS), one can come up with huge volumes of devices: two thirds of the global "tablet market."

These aren't "tier one" tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab, Google Nexus, or Microsoft Surface that are all stubbornly refusing to sell or have any real impact on iPad sales. Instead, these "tier two" products feature CPUs as slow as 600 Mhz, and might include what Reith offhandedly described as "kids tablets or toys."

Some of these are in fact offered for sale by Walmart (below) or Amazon, often at prices under $100. Others range higher toward $250, but if anyone were willing to pay $250 for a tablet, why wouldn't they choose Google's $230 Nexus 7, with reasonable sounding specifications and a brand name, offered without a profit margin?

Given that even Google's Nexus 7 refuses to sell in serious quantities (IDC says Asus, its manufacturer, only sold a total of 3.5 million tablets during the new Nexus 7's Q3 launch quarter), it appears that there is scant demand for "good" Android tablets, forcing the "tier two" crowd to aim low at $40-100 price points, effectively being ewaste trinkets that primarily serve to embarrass the customers suckered into buying them.

What is the relevance of digging up this "tier two" garbage, counting it as a serious product offering, and then announcing that, given the discovery of piles of junk being shoveled into inventory channels, that Apple's iPad "market share" has fallen? Particularly when the same market research firms are studiously avoiding any comparison between conventional PCs and the iPads that are stampeding through their historical markets, a move of noteworthy significance?

Reith acknowledged that the definitions of PC and tablet created by market research firms are arbitrary distinctions, but said he couldn't speak to the numbers calculated by other firms' researchers. The tablet market descriptions by Gartner and Strategy Analytics sound quite similar to what IDC outlined, allowing all three to describe huge pools of "white box tablets" even if their actual numbers are each off by millions of units each quarter.

Strategy Analytics leaves behind a motive clue

There's little mystery of who shot down the iPad's market share or what weapon they're using: all three major market research firms rapidly fire off headline bullets clearly aimed at wounding the perception of Apple's tablet. One can, generally, only speculate about why this is occurring.

However, Strategy Analytics has offered some unusual transparency regarding its motive for carving out a very specific market and then stuffing the pie chart with "tier two" volume to the point where the world's best selling tablet is crushed down into an embarrassing statistical sliver of shrinking "share."

On the company's Clients page, Strategy Analytics notes that its "customer base includes more than half of the world's largest mobile operators and most of the leading infrastructure and device vendors, 13 of the top 15 handset OEMs, five of the top 10 semiconductor companies, two-thirds of the top twenty global operators, eight of the top 10 global automobile manufacturers, the top 10 electronics-focused tier one suppliers and the top 10 automotive semiconductor vendors."

Strategy Analytics sells its research, like Gartner and IDC, in the form of reports that cost corporate buyers thousands of dollars. Only a tiny portion of that data is outlined in the firms' public press releases, because those firms are in business to make money, not just give away collected data. In addition to selling reports, marketing firms also offer a variety of other consulting services.

As Strategy Analytics notes, "we support our clients with a variety of high-stakes projects, including: new product development and product roadmaps; driving existing products down the cost curve; bundled pricing strategies; infrastructure investment and optimization; new market penetration and market expansion; influencing consumer behavior and buying preferences, and many more short- and long-term initiatives."

Enhance!

That last line is particularly interesting because Strategy Analytics came out and said what lots of people have been thinking. Rather than being an unbiased source of purely factual data, Strategy Analytics disclosed that one of its most valuable "high stakes projects" for its clients is the practice of "influencing consumer behavior and buying preferences."

How exactly does reporting facts on sales result in "influencing consumer behavior and buying preferences"? Hypothetically, if one could fool the world's journalists into parroting off statistics that portrayed the most successful vendor of tablets as being in desperate straits and "failing" in a manner of speaking, it would sure take the pressure off of those who are failing to actually sell tablets, wouldn't it?

If you're Pepsi and you're getting outsold by Coke, why not print headlines that statistically compare Coke to every cola on earth, or perhaps every drink containing caffeine? Poor Coke! After inventing such news its "market share" would now ostensibly be slipping into irrelevance, calling into question the fact that it sells the most product in its actual market, makes the most money, and people everywhere pay a premium for its name brand. What a miserable loser Coke suddenly is, just with some creative reporting of meaningless, contrived statistics.

What about in the smartphone market, where one company has a product that is so far ahead of the rest of the industry that it can command a substantial premium per device while still selling in higher volumes than comparable devices from any other individual vendor? And of course, the iPhone isn't just "a Coke" but represents the iOS App Store and development platform, iCloud services and iTunes. It's an ecosystem. It's the new iPod.

Coke vs caffeinated... well anything in a bottle

Samsung just predicted that its premium phone sales for 2013 are expected to reach 100 million units, while Apple has already booked sales of over 150 million iPhones in its fiscal year ending in September, without including an estimate of the upcoming 2013 holiday season expected to set new sales records.

Everyone else is far behind Samsung (and note that Samsung's premium phone numbers include its "phablets," which are the vast majority of the company's tablet sales; Apple separately sold over 71 million iPads in the last fiscal year).

"Influencing consumer behavior and buying preferences" would require creating a composite of competing companies, pooling their sales together under the communal identifying ingredient of "Android," and possibly erasing the boundary between premium phones and stuff that can barely function beyond making a basic phone call.

Add up all this stuff and you could create the impression that the rest of the world is winning with 81 percent of somethingorother, distracting away from the fact that Apple is destroying its competition in both phones and tablets in the only market segments that a vendor with the luxury of being choosy would choose to do business in.

Gartner, IDC & other 'market research' firms are all the same. You're either a tech company playing their game and paying them their dues or you get ignored. If you're actually successful despite being ignored by them then be prepared to have them talk your company and products/services down.

Do I blame them? No, they gotta make their money somehow. But I just hope anyone who pays for their reports realises they're paying for material that may as well feature in a tabloid for all the half-baked facts and opinions it'll be full of.

I think you are fundamentally wrong to look at macs in a general home computer market.
Just like you'd be wrong to compare Porsches with Fords. Mac have never really been mainstream, but for professional users. Its not one market, its segmented such as: home, pro, and business users.

The home market may be changing. I have moved from a windows desktop PC to an iMac just for home use. I became so fed up with Microsoft os and so pleased with my iPad and iPhone that when it came time to replace my computer Apple was the only choice. I now have a trouble free computer that works properly, something that I didn't have under Microsoft's os. Apple is no longer just for selected markets but for home users too.

This is one of your better pieces Daniel. I totally agree with you and while we're at it, why don't pitch coke against every other drink alcoholic or not, including wine.
Disclaimer: I wouldn't recommend to anyone to ever purchase Coke or any other hyper sugared artificial drink.

I am afraid however that all this negative coverage is having its desired effect. Every now and then, someone would bring up the fact that he/she saw in the news that Apple again has lost "marketshare" based entirely on one of these mindless parroted pieces. I'm sure that you and others here, have similar stories to share.

Late yesterday Fortune published an article about Katy Huberty of Morgan Stanley stating Apple’s iPad now trails Android in both units shipped AND revenues.

Katy based her revenues on the IDC report where the 10 million white box tablets were found.

It is bizarre that she chose present the estimates as real based on questionable data, but it does fit with the systematic effort to destroy Apple in the worldwide market place for smartphones and tablets.

As I recall Tim Cook has used IDC (or was it Gartner? Doesn't matter) market reports in his investor calls when they look favorably on Apple. Apparently Apple is OK with their overall accuracy, else why would they quote them?

No doubt they're unlikely to paint an entirely accurate picture in every report in every market they cover but I suspect they're much closer to right than wrong which is why Apple uses them.

As I recall Tim Cook has used IDC market reports in his investor calls when they look favorably on Apple. Apparently Apple is OK with their overall accuracy, else why would they quote them?
...

When IDC is all that's there and even IDC can't figure out a way to falsify information, Tim uses it, that's why.

The next step is figuring out what legal avenues are available to Apple to force companies like IDC from providing obviously false and misleading information. There are ways to pull commercials, especially in Europe, that are misleading so why are IDC and others allowed to made statements like they do unchallenged? We all know the SEC is a bunch of toothless babies who refuse to do their job but isn't there some government agency who can police this rampant abuse of information?

It's really very simple and quite disingenuous.
You can't sell potential business unless you paint an encouraging scenario where there is no overly powerful opposition. In this case, Apple's iPad. The whole disinformation technique relies on marginalising the controlling incumbent to create space for more competition. Of course it doesn't exist(this market space) but when did that ever stop these fools who promote bogus opportunities or the companies that rely on their broken business model?
Also missing, is that Apple only competes in the iPad sector...not the Android sector where everyone is knee deep in denial and a race to the bottom.
Personally I don't think it's that harmful to Apple's future business prospects - annoying yes, but also hilarious when they(Strategy Analytics, IDC...etc) are forced to fall on their swords to defend their past record...
Just like this latest report.

When IDC is all that's there and even IDC can't figure out a way to falsify information, Tim uses it, that's why.

The next step is figuring out what legal avenues are available to Apple to force companies like IDC from providing obviously false and misleading information. There are ways to pull commercials, especially in Europe, that are misleading so why are IDC and others allowed to made statements like they do unchallenged?

Could lack of a challenge possibly be due to Apple generally considering IDC accurate? Tim Cook hasn't shied away from "correcting the record" when it's plainly wrong in Apple's view so what's stopping him now if it's so misleading?

Secondly, worth adding the self-deluding use of studies like these is representative of practices used by Romney leading up to the last election - and still followed by many in the Republican Party since. Gallup established the pattern when they predicted Dewey's victory over Truman - and Quinnipiac and Rasmussen continue to profit from the same style.

When IDC is all that's there and even IDC can't figure out a way to falsify information, Tim uses it, that's why.

The next step is figuring out what legal avenues are available to Apple to force companies like IDC from providing obviously false and misleading information. There are ways to pull commercials, especially in Europe, that are misleading so why are IDC and others allowed to made statements like they do unchallenged?

Could lack of a challenge possibly be due to Apple generally considering IDC accurate? Tim Cook hasn't shied away from "correcting the record" when it's plainly wrong in Apple's view so what's stopping him now if it's so misleading?

In the 2010 - 2012 timeframe both IDC and Gartner made some unavoidably accurate observations about Apple's performance in relation to both the PC and mobile markets that Tim Cook, not unexpectedly, did mention. Since then their agenda does seem to have changed back to data manipulation and obfuscation.

Whether that is due to pressure from their customer base to stop advertising just how much Apple is dominating the market is hard to know with certainty, but DED presents a credible case for it. Your argument that it can't be true because Tim Cook has occasionally endorsed previous analyses and not attempted to refute the recent ones seems weak to me, since it appears to be predicated on two unreasonable assumptions; that IDC's motives and reporting fidelity are inherently constant, and that Tim Cook would be expected to use refutation and endorsement equally.

There's quite a good reason for paying that Mac Tax and going with Apple. Not only are the OS X upgrades now free, you can trust them to be genuine improvements. Microsoft's only batting about 1 in 3 for new versions being actual improvements.

I agree that Apple's probably not that threatened in the smartphone or tablet markets. There's a good reason for that. If you assume a 3-year life for a product (dad/mom for two years, the kids for one), Then paying an extra $200 for an iOS product you'll love is only about 18 cents a day more than a barely name brand product that you'll want to discard after six months. And given how the iTunes store works, once someone buys a set of iOS apps, they've essentially got a lifetime subscription to those apps on every iOS device they buy in the future. That keeps them in the Apple family.

Perhaps the only way current conditions hurt Apple is that may consumers conclude that their iDevice (particularly the iPad) is 'good enough' that they need not buy or upgrade that Mac quite yet.

That's my situation. My six-year-old MacBook has missed out on the latest two OS X upgrades, but it's still reliable and still runs every app I need to run on it. I may be tempted to upgrade it to the latest MacBook Air, but every time I do, I find myself deciding that my iPad 3 has the same long battery life and with a keyboard will serve as well for simple writing tasks on browsing on the go.

Also influencing me is the fact that, with their recent Mac line, Apple seems to have declared war on upgradability and repairability. I can replace the hard drive and RAM on that old MacBook in about 10 minutes and change out the battery in mere seconds. I can't replace or upgrade the RAM or SSD on the new MBA at all and replacing the battery involved a lot of mucking about with glued in parts.

The last is particularly frustrating. All Apple would need to do to make battery change easy would be to keep that battery in place with velcro rather than glue.

My biggest problem with these methodologies that they're plainly wrong, and yet no one really cares (Gatorguy, please don't bother with your proforma Tim Cook comment -- it's beside the point). People use it with abandon nonetheless.

What do I mean? Simply put, we cannot calculate market share numbers without data on volumes sold. Apple is the only company for which we have ACTUAL, audited data on volumes and sales. All the other companies give us only values and shipments. So, their volumes sold have to be estimated.

What does a company like IDC do? It takes Apple's actuals and conflates it with estimates for other companies. That is the first problem, right there. Second, they don't tell us anywhere what their methodology is. For example there is always this massive category of 'Others' that is never explained; similarly, they never explain their sampling approaches. Third, if they wanted to be even halfway honest -- at least consistent -- they should report an estimate for Apple using the same methodology that they adopt for other manufacturers. But I can see why they won't do that: because they'd be caught out -- we'd be able to compare their estimates against actuals for Apple!

So essentially, what we have is trash data.Edited by anantksundaram - 11/16/13 at 7:42am

If you're Pepsi and you're getting outsold by Coke, why not print headlines that statistically compare Coke to every cola on earth, or perhaps every drink containing caffeine? Poor Coke! After inventing such news its "market share" would now ostensibly be slipping into irrelevance, calling into question the fact that it sells the most product in its actual market, makes the most money, and people everywhere pay a premium for its name brand. What a miserable loser Coke suddenly is, just with some creative reporting of meaningless, contrived statistics.

Perhaps the best example of this is the US "smartphone" market. The total US cell phone market is growing very slowly right now, but most feature phones are being replaced with low-end Android devices. Soon they will all be "smartphones", but for the moment the US smartphone market is growing explosively. So despite the fact that iPhone now has a 25.1% share of all cell phones in use in the US (according to comScore mobiLens, who have the best figures on this), and that a year ago it was 17.5% and two years ago it was 10.2%, Apple is losing smartphone marketshare!

Of course the US smartphone market will stop growing fast soon, since smartphone penetration will reach 75% in another year or so (it's currently around 50%). At that point these people will have to find another fake market to compare iPhone to!

Could lack of a challenge possibly be due to Apple generally considering IDC accurate? Tim Cook hasn't shied away from "correcting the record" when it's plainly wrong in Apple's view so what's stopping him now if it's so misleading?

Another possible interpretation:

When you catch IDC or whoever putting out figures in your favor, exploit it for what you can get out of it.

Whatever you do, don't start a PR war with them, because you will lose, since they are in the business of twisting the truth for their clients: the companies lined up against you, the analysts, and the lapdog journalists. Their infrastructure of mendacity for hire is in place. The only thing you can do is use a tidbit here and there when it happens to come out in your favor.

20 yr Windows IT admin here, bought my first iMac G5 in'05, and have bought 2 MPBs, 2 Minis, 2 iPads and 6 iPhones for our household since. I did buy one intel desktop for Windows server VM work -- stuffed it in a closet and use the MS RDP client to access it.. from my macs.

This is a great teardown piece DED. I see what they're doing, and most AppleInsider readers can see what their doing. I haven't had a slimmer of respect for Gartner or IDC for over a decade -- I know the game they play for their paying customers. Unfortunately their damning statistics game does have some impact on the less educated consumers out there.

I really like your comparison between Apple and Samsung sales -- Samsung acts as a good proxy for the Android market since Samsung seems to be the only manufacturer with volume and profit. In my mind that makes Apple 66% of the market, and Samsung 33%. Not bad for god ol' little Apple. ;-)Edited by Srice - 11/16/13 at 7:43am

If the theme of this drama piece is that analytic firms have a hidden agenda, why the exposition quote from Dvorak who apparently based his prediction on what was presumably unbiased data from W3C? As far as I know Dvorak is just a pathetic Windows fan boy and a bit of a buffoon, but what does his prognostication have to do with the central premise of the article?

Quote: Dvorak article from 2004

I've been thinking about this marketing dilemma ever since seeing those w3C numbers, and I've concluded that the real problem with Mac marketing is a weird logical inconsistency that can only worsen the product's market situation. In fact, unless something changes drastically, I can't see the circumstances improving. Ironically, this logical inconsistency is also what makes the Mac great. There's a conundrum in choosing to go with simplicity versus complexity.

The iPhone is a success -- there is no argument to be made that it's not -- but prior to its debut, various upgrades, redesigns and record-breaking sales figures, there were plenty of folks who thought it would flop.

Now that we've seen the release of eight different iPhones, let's take a look back at some of the most ridiculous things that eight "experts" have said about Apple's original foray into the smartphone market.

"This is not a great phone. It's an interesting design." -- Rob Enderle, analyst with the Enderle Group

"That virtual keyboard will be about as useful for tapping out emails and text messages as a rotary phone. Don't be surprised if a sizable contingent of iPhone buyers express some remorse at ditching their BlackBerry when they spend an extra hour each day pumping out emails on the road." -- Seth Porges, CrunchGear

"Apple will sell a few to its fans, but the iPhone won't make a long-term mark on the industry." -- Matthew Lynn, columnist at Bloomberg

"I'm more convinced than ever that, after an initial frenzy of publicity and sales to early adopters, iPhone sales will be unspectacular." --David Haskin, Computerworld

"Implementing a cellphone is absolutely more difficult than anything Apple's done to date. Go out and buy an iPod and hold it at waist level and drop it. That's the end of the iPod. I don't think Apple's going to be a big player in this at all." -- Edward Snyder, analyst with Charter Equity Research

"There is no reason to have an 8GB iPod on the phone. Give us a 2GB capacity so we can put our favorite stuff on it and listen when we want, cut the price to $299 and you may have something." -- Todd Sullivan, Seeking Alpha

"[The iPhone] will have very little impact on the business community." -- Avi Greengart, analyst with Current Analysis

"Sales for the phone will skyrocket initially. However, things will calm down, and the Apple phone will take its place on the shelves with the random video cameras, cellphones, wireless routers and other would-be hits." -- Michael Kanellos, editor at CNET

Yes, hindsight is 20-20. That said, you are now encouraged to point at these quotes and laugh maniacally.

Really? LOL. It reminds me of the ranting of the right about the left wing mass media "conspiracy."

AI lost me when they pointed to a Dvorak article and tried to take it seriously. Dvorak is paid say outrageous things, stir up the hornets nest if you will. The author doesn't seem to understand that. Basic math also seems a challenge because they don't seem to understand the simple fact that sales can increase while the percentage of the market share goes down.

Time would have been better spent on the fact that market share numbers, especially on their own, mean absolutely nothing.

-kpluck

Do you use MagicJack?

The default settings will automatically charge your credit card each year for service renewal. You will not be notified or warned in anyway. You can turn auto renewal off.

As I recall Tim Cook has used IDC (or was it Gartner? Doesn't matter) market reports in his investor calls when they look favorably on Apple. Apparently Apple is OK with their overall accuracy, else why would they quote them?

No doubt they're unlikely to paint an entirely accurate picture in every report in every market they cover but I suspect they're much closer to right than wrong which is why Apple uses them.

I don't think he's (entirely) questioning their data so much as arguing they are choosing to present the results in a way that is not flattering to Apple.

Mercedes has around 2% of the US automobile market share. Does anyone get in a tizzy over that? Should Mercedes be excluded from being counted as an automobile? No. Its a valid number and whether that market share is growing or declining is pretty important to both Mercedes and Wall Street. Everyone recognizes their margins are higher and you can also find an equal number of data sets and articles that focus solely on only *premium* automobile market share and will have relative shares of BMW, Porsche, and Mercedes.

They are two different discussion. Both are important. Both are valid.

Within the premium phone market Apple is kicking butt. It is not hard to find a plethora of articles supporting that. Daniel seems to believe that that is the only valid discussion and should be the only one any articles focus on. I agree with him that it is an important one, but not that it should be the only one.

From Wall Streets perspective the premium phone market is certainly not dead, but its growth has slowed to a trickle. Apple doing well within the segment that is growing slowly *is* of note to Wall Street, but what they are more interested in is the segment of the market that is poised for huge growth- the low end segment. Call them 'junk phones' if it makes you feel better, but that's where the huge growth is going to be in the next few years. Wall Street is rightfully interested in any data it can get on that, and it may even be true that they are *more* interested in that than the data on the more established and predictable high end market. Apple chose not compete in the high growth segment and that is fine.

Getting mad at data firms and Wall Street for looking at the data that is important to them just because doesn't align with your belief that it should instead focus on how awesome your favorite company is would seem silly if it didn't serve the higher purpose of rallying the other members of the fan base.

I do like the Mac history in the article. Despite being a great product its high price/margins did have it on the ropes. The Mac certainly had its merits, but that is not what saved it. Had Apple continued to just iterate the Mac in incremental improvements it would have died. The breakthrough home run that saved the Mac was the iPod, followed by the Grand Slam iPhone. High margins *can't* be maintained in a competitive market and Apple has done tremendously by consistenly and amazingly innovating new ones. The iPhones have done tremendously but the market *is* becoming a competitive one- Apple reported less operating income in 2013 than 2012 despite better sales and their impressive growth in the high end segment. The pressure is there. If Daniels story is accurate he is saying that Apple *can* maintain their high margins and grow even more as a company- all they need to do is hit the next 'home run.' That seems to be in agreement with Wall Street, so why do Apple fans always seem to get mad when Wall Street indicates its really time for Apple to come out with something new? I'm hoping they do because the world then just becomes that much of a cooler place.

While DED in this case does have more logic than usual, the white label vendors of tablets should be named or ignored, he is guilty as usual of assuming the conclusion. iPads are apparantly as dominant as iPods. But the same analysts who admit iPod dominance dispute the dominance of the iPad.

Look. This is a business. DED sells kool aid to believers. You can believe what you want but actual facts matter - the iPad is not as dominant as it was and nowhere near as dominant as the iPod.

When you catch IDC or whoever putting out figures in your favor, exploit it for what you can get out of it.

Whatever you do, don't start a PR war with them, because you will lose, since they are in the business of twisting the truth for their clients: the companies lined up against you, the analysts, and the lapdog journalists. Their infrastructure of mendacity for hire is in place. The only thing you can do is use a tidbit here and there when it happens to come out in your favor.

Late yesterday Fortune published an article about Katy Huberty of Morgan Stanley stating Apple’s iPad now trails Android in both units shipped AND revenues.

Katy based her revenues on the IDC report where the 10 million white box tablets were found.

It is bizarre that she chose present the estimates as real based on questionable data, but it does fit with the systematic effort to destroy Apple in the worldwide market place for smartphones and tablets.